Local actor joins Sunflower fund’s national drive to fight blood diseases

Local actor and cast member of the popular TV soapie Skeem Saam, Eric Macheru is teaming up with the Sunflower Fund for a national drive to create awareness and education about blood diseases and to encourage people to register as blood stem cell donors.
Macheru from Seshego’s Zone 4 has been an Ambassador of Hope for the Sunflower Fund for two years and regularly gives of his time to engage young people to help grow the stem cell donor registry.
Macheru said he teamed up with the Sunflower Fund because there is so much misinformation about blood stem cell donation and people don’t respond because of a lack of information .“What most people don’t understand is that there are various blood diseases that can affect you at any given point in your life,” Macheru said.
According to a press statement issued by the Sunflower Fund common blood disorders include anaemia, bleeding disorders such as haemophilia and blood cancers such as leukaemia, lymphoma, and myeloma. For many patients diagnosed with blood diseases, the only hope of cure is a blood stem cell (bone marrow) transplant. “Patients from all ages and races can find themselves in need of a transplant and in such an instance they are looking for their genetic twin. The chances of finding this match is 1:100 000 and the best chance of a match is within your same ethnic background. There is only a 25% chance that a sibling will be a match. The remaining 75% chance depends on an unrelated matching donor being found. Black patients around the world are at a disadvantage due to the underrepresentation of black, coloured and Indian donors in the global donor pool.
“A blood stem cell transplant as it is more commonly known today, is essentially a procedure where a person’s defective cells in their bone marrow is replaced by healthy ones from their donor. For the donor, it involves a fairly painless procedure that can take up to six hours, which is very similar to donating platelets and with no major side effects. The Sunflower Fund is calling on individuals between the ages of 18 to 45 years, in general good health with a weight of more than 50 kg
and a BMI of less than 40 to register as donors. The national drive through which The Sunflower Funds hopes to recruit 3 000 donors commences on 1 March 2019. Individuals can call The Sunflower Fund directly to register. Companies, sports clubs, universities and colleges are urged to invite the organisation to come through and conduct a public drive to spread awareness and recruit donors on one day,” the statement read.

Story: Herbert Rachuene
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